Is there some way to rip the cd portion of a dual disc to mp3?
I tried it with EAC but it didn't work.
thanks

DDs don't conform to Red Book audio CD specs. Just keep trying with different programs until something works.

Also, it's generally a good idea to avoid DDs - you're better off buying the plain old audio-only release if you're interested in ripping.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the CD side of DualDisc just a standard cd layer? It should be able to be ripped with any ripper. On the other hand, the disc doesn't conform to spec so your drive may have problems with it.

It's supposed to be, but it's thinner than what the RedBook standard calls for, so a lot of drives have difficulty reading it.

Stupid question: Is the disc copy protected?
If it is and you agreed to anything, that disc could legally put a root kit on your machine and you'd never get that disc copied short of reformatting that machine.

It can be, but it doesn't have to be. That's kind of the problem - you can't pick up any DualDisc with a huge confidence in being able to rip the content.

Also, besides the CD layer being thinner as Firon said, in some cases the entire physical disc is actually thicker than spec, resulting in physical playback/ripping/general handling problems on some drives.

Bottom line for me is that there are vanishingly few DualDisc-only releases, so it's a better idea to stick to standard discs.

I wonder if you'd have better luck with an older, slower CD-only drive vs. a newer, faster combo drive?

-brendan

If you're having trouble ripping the CD side, maybe try the DVD side. AFAIK typically the DVD side of a dualdisc release will have the full album on there in both 5.1 surround AND as an uncompressed stereo PCM audiotrack. Ripping PCM audio off a DVD isn't as streamlined a process as something like EAC for ripping, compressing, and tagging audio all in one go but with something like DVDDecrypter for ripping followed up with compressing & tagging in Foobar, it's not too hard.

I have one DD in my collection, and I was able to rip the CD side just fine using EAC. I didn't have to do anything special, it just worked the same as a CD. I guess I was just ignorant and lucky.

As has been said before, the CD side of DualDiscs don't conform to the standard. That's why there's a notice saying something to the effect of "This disc may not be readable in all players" on the cover.

Some CD drives can read DualDisc, some can't. I was only able to rip mine because I had several spare drives laying around, and one of them worked.

I've never had a problem ripping the audio side of DualDisc using EAC... but I only own a few of them. My drive is a BenQ DW1655.

To the admins:

Is this a big problem? Would it be worth creating a sticky topic about which DualDiscs are problematic and/or which drives work/don't work for ripping DualDisc?

I doubt it's a major issue as I don't really know of any releases that are DualDisc-only. In all but probably vanishingly few cases you should be able to pick up a regular CD release from somewhere.

What are you talking about? One well-known example of a Dual-Disc album is Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better.

All of the Talking Heads remasters are Dual-Disc only. I ended up having some trouble with a couple of them in EAC using test-and-copy (burst mode) -- had to use secure mode.

As a data point; I too have had issues ripping dual layer discs(Good Charlotte and Fear Factory) in both dBpoweramp CD ripper and EAC. Only way to get them to work for me was to rip them in burst mode.

EDIT-Even in burst mode without a scratch at all on the disc I am getting a lot of clipping/skipping.